The second Ars UK meetup was a triumph of networking and nerdery

Now tell me: What would you like from future Ars Technica meetups?

We sold 80 tickets to the second Ars Technica UK meetup. About 70 people turned up, I reckon.

Mark Walton

We had a couple of hundred special Ars coasters made for the meetup. Towards the end of the night, I saw lots of people grabbing as many coasters that they could fit into their pockets. I even autographed a few.

Mark Walton

What's the collective noun for a bunch of cool, interesting nerds?

Mark Walton

Kelly Fiveash, our new News Editor, on the left.

Mark Walton

That's me on the right. Mark made this photo black and white for some reason. I think it makes me look quite regal.

Mark Walton

That's Ciara (head of our commercial operations) in the middle.

Mark Walton

Happy nerds

Mark Walton

We had the private basement bar in The Sun & 13 Cantons, a nice bar in Soho, London.

Mark Walton

Some more happy nerds.

Mark Walton

Yet more happy nerds.

Mark Walton

As Michael Jackson once said... Man in the mirror, oh yeah!

Mark Walton

How to make an Ars Technica UK meetup (serves 1.5 million):

Procure a private room at a nice bar in London

Ensure there's a good range of beers and ales

Invite 80 of your engineer/architect/doctor/sysadmin friends along

Talk about interesting stuff with interesting people for four hours

All too quickly, 11pm rolls around and security kicks you out

Head home, sleep for a few hours, wake up and continue running the best tech site in the UK

There were two main themes at the meetup: For the editorial team (Mark, Kelly, and I), it was a prime opportunity to talk to the community about how Ars Technica is doing. For everyone else, the meetup was just a great way to meet their fellow Arsians, to network (almost everyone at the event had an interesting job), and to communicate any grievances (or compliments!) with me directly.

As far as I could tell, everyone left the meetup very satisfied.

How are we doing?

But what about all the people who couldn't make it to the meetup? Shouldn't you get to communicate your compliments and grievances as well? Well, of course!

So, I have two questions for you:

How is Ars Technica UK doing? Are you happy with how things have progressed since we launched in May last year? Is there anything you'd change?

What're your feelings towards community meetups? Are you happy with a bunch of Arsians in a room chatting/networking? Would you be more interested if we had some local startups showing off their latest VR headset thing? Or some luminary engineer talking about some interesting stuff? Etc. Basically, we're going to do more community meetups this year, and we're currently deciding how best to run them.

Sebastian Anthony
Sebastian is the editor of Ars Technica UK. He usually writes about low-level hardware, software, and transport, but it is emerging science and the future of technology that really get him excited. Emailsebastian@arstechnica.co.uk//Twitter@mrseb